PATUXENT RIVER NAS, Md. – U.S. Navy service aviation consultants are ordering unmanned aerial tankers from the Boeing Co. in preparation for future bigger orders and eventual service deployment of those unmanned tanker plane.
Officers of the Naval Air Methods Command at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., introduced an $47.5 million order to the Boeing Co. Protection, Area & Safety section in St. Louis in late September for MQ-25 Stingray low-rate preliminary manufacturing lot 1 for the U.S. Navy.
The MQ-25 aerial refueling tanker is the U.S. Navy’s first operational carrier-based unmanned plane and is designed to offer a much-needed refueling functionality, Boeing officers say. Navy officers anticipate to declare MQ-25 preliminary operational functionality by 2024. The MQ-25 first flew final fall.
The MQ-25 will present plane service-based refueling functionality to increase extending the fight vary of deployed F/A-18 Tremendous Hornet, EA-18G Growler, and Lockheed Martin F-35C fight plane.
Boeing received a $805 million improvement contract to construct 4 MQ-25 carrier-based unmanned aerial tankers in 2018, prevailing over competing designs constructed by Normal Atomics in San Diego and the Northrop Grumman Corp. Aeronautics Methods section in Palmdale, Calif.
The Boeing MQ-25 plane has a complicated, custom-made distant I/O interface controller based mostly from Aitech Protection Methods Inc. in Chatsworth, Calif. The system is predicated on the Aitech Ai-RIO avionics distant interface.
The Ai-RIO is expandable with as many as eight items networked collectively. Added capabilities embody I/O, energy switching, and mass/SD FLASH reminiscence. The distant I/O subsystem features a Gigabit Ethernet port with precision time sync IEEE-1588 assist, 10 RS-422 ports, eight LVDS or RS-422/485 UARTS, 4 SpaceWire ports with LVDS I/O, two CANbus ports, and 16 GPIO in two blocks of eight.
The Ai-RIO is an excessive density, low energy rugged subsystem for automobile platform flight management, angle and navigation controls, servo-valve and thrust vector management (TVC), robotic motor management, video and picture processing and storage, knowledge telemetry, platform stabilization, communications and telematics, excessive velocity knowledge recorders, booster and launch propulsion and thruster management, distant sensor and effector monitoring.
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Boeing can use the Ai-RIO as a stand-alone command and knowledge dealing with platform or networked distant command/response I/O unit. It a radiation-qualified dual-core PowerPC processor with two rad-tolerant FPGAs. All inside electronics are conduction-cooled and mechanically fastened and housed inside a sealed, EMI/EMC Faraday cage for optimum thermal switch.
Along with Aitech, different subcontractors to Boeing on the MQ-25 venture are; BAE Methods; Collins Aerospace; Cox & Co.; Crane Aerospace & Electronics; Cubic; Curtiss-Wright Protection Options; Normal Electrical Corp.; L3Harris Applied sciences; Héroux-Devtek; Honeywell Worldwide; Modern Energy Options; Moog Plane Group; Parker Hannifin; Raytheon; Rolls-Royce; and Triumph Group.
On this order Boeing will do the work in Torrance, Burbank, and Chatsworth, Calif.; McKinney, Texas; St. Louis; Longueuil, Quebec; Palm Bay, Fla.; Indianapolis; Ajzx, Ontario; Wayne, N.J.; and Farmingdale, N.Y., and ought to be completed by September 2026.
For extra info contact Boeing Protection, Area & Safety on-line at www.boeing.com/firm/about-bds, or Naval Air Methods Command at www.navair.navy.mil.
